The Pennsylvania Massacre-Trump Undone in the City of Brotherly Love:
Just One More Reason to Keep the Debate Dodger in Mar-a-Lago and Send a Message to MAGA's Career Politicians this November. Donald Trump Is not the Role Model America Needs.
Feel free to check the entire blog archives from “Political Pulse” & “Salzillo Report” on the 2024 primary cycle, rural outreach, redistricting litigation, base dynamics, campaign organization, the current media landscape, the issues at stake, Project 2025, Build Back Better, the progressive movement, the true story about former 2024 VP contender Gina Raimondo, and much more.
We all saw it. We wished we didn’t, but we did. It is just another example of why Donald Trump is not qualified to be the commander-in-chief of the most powerful nation in the world. Just so people know, when your candidate says he won the debate, and then accuses the Vice President of receiving questions in advance (via an earpiece or her earrings), and then mock the hair of the debate moderators, you know you lost the debate.
Remember the June debate between Biden and Trump? Well, for all the scrutiny of Biden’s age, we now know this: in recent months, the President has been working his tail off every day, including freeing hostages from across the globe via complex multinational agreements, supporting Ukraine & Taiwan & the Philippines against their aggressors, and working around the clock to get a ceasefire in Gaza. The latter mission has been made harder because of a certain Israeli Prime Minister who is thwarting a ceasefire deal and thus delaying the time when Hamas can be held truly accountable.
But let me get back to the point. At the very least, we all know the President can do the job for the last remaining months.
As for Donald Trump? Last week told us everything we needed to know about what he was like last time, and what he would do the next time around.
For all the criticisms about the Vice President, all of them pale in comparison to Trump. Now, would I like to see more interviews from Harris, even if it’s just with local news stations or small town newspapers, or virtual podcasts? Sure. Would I like her to “distinguish” herself from Biden by running on a message of, among other things, undoing the damage of Citizens United? Absolutely. She should make her campaign about using Democratic political momentum to go to the root causes of America’s troubles.
I would like more policy rollouts from now to November for all voters to see and hear for themselves. I would like to see the Vice President talk even more about the Harris-Walz campaign vision and tout the actual record of Build Back Better in much greater depth. I would like to even quell the same concerns out there regarding her policy changes, which reflect a shift in approach, not a total change in values.
All that is nothing compared to the unhinged rantings of a more unhinged Trump. As people start voting all across the nation this month, we ought to discuss some of these debate highlights when making the final decision.
Has Donald Trump changed? Has it been for the better? Is this the same man who ran against Clinton in 2016, or even the same man who ran against Biden in 2020?
Is he a unifier? Is he being honest with the American people? Is he looking out for you? The answer from Tuesday: he sure as hell isn’t.
Just recently, he has caused a massive panic in Springfield, Ohio. Schools shut down, law-abiding Haitian (legal) immigrants attacked, Proud Boys marching on the streets, irate townspeople, upset mayors, and a bewildered Ohio Republican governor. Is this the type of attention and chaos you want in your city? Because that is what Trump brings to everyday Trump-supporting communities like Springfield, Ohio.
Even if you are a Trump supporter, how much more can you take?
Has Trump changed? Not a bit. He’s as stuck in the past as much as voters are concerned about the future. Count the “Is” everyone. Crowd sizes are more important to him than how you are doing.
He complains about the weaponization of justice, a claim as false as it can be for this real estate mogul and elite oligarch who has gotten preferential treatment in ways the average American could never even dream of. He spouted more than 30 self-serving lies in a span of 90 minutes. He grumbled when ABC News tried to fact-check his absurd claims of abortion after birth and Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats, even though Trump actually spoke for 5 more minutes than Harris did.
Worst of all, he brought the stale playbook of an outdated, boring, and weird TV show we’ve been watching for nearly a decade. Time to cancel the show, people. “Donald, you’re fired! Now get back in the kitchen, fire up the grill, and cook up those ripoff Trump steaks!”
Unifier? If demonizing immigrants over and over is a unifying message, think again. The 2015 opening salvo actually sounds tame compared to what we have heard recently. In fact, you want to pretend ABC was biased against Trump? He was wasn’t even asked about “the immigrants poisoning the blood of our country.”
We did hear the bloodbath reference, which he tried denying even though we all heard it on tape. He attempted the same with the “Terminate the Constitution” rant that was put down in clear black type on Truth Social. Let’s not forget that he questioned the intelligence of his rival, expressed doubts about her racial background, and intentionally mispronounced her name continuously on TV.
Honest with the American people? He still says the 2020 election was stolen publicly, even though he tried to laugh off his admission that he lost to Biden “by a whisker.” Nice try, Donald. That’s why you are still hell bent on pardoning the January 6 insurrectionists—or “hostages,” as you like to call them. So either Trump is deluding himself, he is lying intentionally to us, or he is doing both. Hardly a sign of reassurance for the public.
Again, 30+ lies in 90 minutes detected by all the media fact checkers, compared to a small handful of misstatements by Vice President Harris at most.
Plus, Trump tried to blame Harris for putting a target on him in Butler, Pennsylvania. Wow.
As Harris said in her best one-liner of the night, “talk about extreme.” Trump is listening too much to JD Vance and Laura Loomer. Eating the pets? Why does Trump wonder why people call him weird? Hmm. If he didn’t say and do weird stuff all the time like praise Hannibal Lector, read his own snake poem, talk about windmill cancer junk science, hanging around childless cat lady haters, and more, we wouldn’t have to call him weird. Just saying.
Who is he doing all this for? People like himself. He told his rich friends at Mar-a-Lago he was going to cut their taxes further if reelected. He is wining and dining regularly with business CEOs, Wall Street venture capital elites, Silicon Valley techies, price-gouging Big Oil executives, Big Pharma companies, self-proclaimed union busters, job outsourcers, agribusiness leaders, crypto billionaire freaks, and other well-connected GOP special interests.
It all comes down to two simple words: Project 2025. He might try rewording it in Agenda 47, but the substance is all the same. The platform language is even similar, and so is the personnel who advised and co-authored large pieces of the 900-page far-right authoritarian manifesto (somehow makes Karl Marx look like a more laid-back doctrinaire). Trump himself praised the Heritage Foundation’s work in 2022, and he and his team have met with Project 2025 leaders consistently, even up to the present moment. Make no mistake Americans, this is Donald Trump’s playbook which he will happily use on Day One if elected.
Trump politicians and analysts will say personality doesn’t matter. The issues do. Yet what does Trump’s Project 2025 connection tell you about the Trump-Vance vision?
Trump can try to run off some kind of nostalgia. He can celebrate the past all he wants, although that past, especially 2020, might not be something people want to go back to. Still, let’s go further. Let’s talk about Trump’s many policy failures. The inability to get an actual “Infrastructure Week.” The failure to stand up to Putin, even for our own intelligence officials. The lack of any policy “accomplishment” besides cutting taxes for almost-exclusively the top 1%.
You could see a reflection of those many Trump failures in the debate. He could not say he was rooting for Ukraine, in fear of upsetting his fellow strongman Vladimir Putin. He could not say anything about defending Taiwan. Could not say anything coherent about Israel or Gaza (besides baselessly accusing the Democrats of hating Israelis and Palestinians, however that works).
He praised Viktor Orban once more. All he could say on energy was “drill baby drill!” See how that works when the coal, oil, and natural gas runs out and when the US sees a total climate catastrophe down the road.
This is the man we want to inherit the economy? On inflation, he promised to lower it, and then proposed a sales tax/tariff that will actually exacerbate inflation. Does Trump understand how a tariff works?
On crime, well, he just ran down false crime numbers. By the way, the numbers were worse when he was President. Ironically.
On immigration, the best he could do was tank a bipartisan compromise backed even by the Border Patrol. Now he has a deportation program set to go in 2025 that will round up all undocumented and legal immigrants in the United States.
And on healthcare, after 9 years in the political realm, he can only offer “concepts of a plan.” In other words, he has no plan. Period.
Not many specifics here, but we have enough to know. This is not the agenda the American people would want by any stretch.
Unlike Trump, Vice President Harris does have plans out there with surely more to come. Hopefully she will release plans on issues like vocational training and others, with a Rural America platform plank in the works. I might want more details still, but if anyone offered substance last Tuesday, it certainly was not Donald Trump. It was Vice President Harris with her 2024 campaign vision.
Even beyond that, Trump is just too damn old and stale. Think of Trump as your own uncle or grandfather. What would you say if he was spouting all sorts of random divisive bile? Or if he was completely out of it about what happened during the past 4 years? Or if he claimed that immigrants are essentially either cannibals or animal murderers?
And that’s leaving out his association with Nick Fuentes & Kanye West, his calls for military tribunals against his political opponents, and his quadrupling-down on the lies of 2020.
Think Joe Biden could get away with saying any of that? If Kamala Harris said even a third of this, the Republican Party defenders of Trump would already be calling for her to be lynched.
Trump has lost it, even beyond where he was before. He is clearly in cognitive decline. And pundits thought Biden was “too old?” Really?
The Wannabe Emperor has no clothes. Trump is a threat to our very democracy we need to take seriously and reject decisively in 2024.